


The Past is Who They Are

by Valmouth



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Past Relationship(s), What Ifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 14:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1651334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Lewis didn’t think of Val, then Lewis would not be Lewis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Past is Who They Are

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own no rights to these two people or to the TV show(s) they are derived from. I mean no offence by posting this and make no money from it.

They have a bad experience at the local pub, not six months into their new and delicate relationship.

The first Hathaway is aware of the trouble they’re about to be in is when Lewis catches someone’s eye and then looks away hurriedly, blinks twice, and says, “Of all the bloody people...”

Hathaway turns his head around and he spots the approaching storm in the figure of a slender, sensitive-looking woman in purple glasses. He doesn’t dare open his mouth to ask who she is, and anyway, she descends on them before he can work himself up to intrude on whatever painful jolt she’s given Lewis.

“Robbie,” she says, and her voice is soft and genuine, “Don’t you know me?”

Hathaway watches Lewis furrow his brow and give a convincing performance of half-recognition.

“The face is familiar but I don’t...”

“Sally Kenwood,” she says, like it means something.

Maybe it does. Robbie makes noises of polite enlightenment and stands up, hand out.

She pulls him down and kisses him on his cheek.

“Mrs Kenwood,” he says, and then introduces Hathaway.

Hathaway is far less kind-hearted, and he doesn’t like how stiff Robbie’s arm is where it brushes against his own. Something about the situation sets his teeth on edge and so he doesn’t stand up. Just looks up and smiles thinly at her. Besides, she doesn’t give him more than a passing glance.

“Mrs Kenwood was Mark’s teacher,” Robbie explains.

And Hathaway stifles a sigh. When she sits down, he stands up, glass in hand. “Another one, sir? Mrs. Kenwood?”

Lewis darts him a glare for his pains but Mrs Kenwood still barely looks at him, even though she shakes her head and sweetly says, thank you, no, she was only stopping by for a minute.

Hathaway buys another but he waits at the bar, exchanging desultory remarks on the weather with someone else stranded in that no man’s land. In reality, he watches over the man’s shoulder as Mrs Kenwood lays a hand on Robbie’s hand, face sympathetic. And he watches Lewis freeze, pain following anger following numbed incredulity.

And Hathaway would dearly love to turn back time. He would love to say ‘let’s stay in’ and read in companionable peace while Lewis grumbles at him for being a closet hermit and turns the TV up almost too loud to bear. Unfortunately he can neither turn back time nor change what has happened. If he could, he wonders if he wouldn’t push for more. If he wouldn’t, for instance, save Mrs. Lewis, give Will a different answer, solve the murders before they happen, save Paul and Briony and Scarlett and stood between them and Augustus.

And if he were to do all that, would life still be perfect? Would Lewis be there, standing up, saying something, extricating himself and coming towards him? Would he not, for instance, go home to his wife, if his wife were still alive? Would Will have believed him, no matter what he told him? Would the murderers change their ways? Wouldn’t there always be other murders? Other things going wrong? Saving Paul and Briony and Scarlett couldn’t mean he would save the other unknown children, those pictures in a locked drawer in Mortmaigne's study; some so yellow and old that no one remembered the names of the children in them.

He doesn’t touch Lewis yet, just pushes the beer across the counter and watches while Lewis drinks deep. Over Robbie’s shoulder, Mrs Kenwood looks puzzled and slightly hurt.

Hathaway is glad to see it. He wants her to hurt. Better her than...

Lewis is the one who grabs him, hand clenching in the lapel of his coat, and he grits out, “Let’s go home, James.”

When they’re in the car, Lewis says, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“It shouldn’t be like this. Not after...”

“After what? So many years?”

“No. Not after you. Us. I shouldn’t be thinking of her.”

He’s right. Hathaway would prefer that Lewis didn’t think of Val. He would prefer to be the one and only, the true love, the eternal preference, but that isn’t the case. The reality is that Lewis was very happily married, and if Val had been alive then he would have had no chance.

But if Lewis didn’t think of Val, then Lewis would not be Lewis. And one of the reasons this works is because Hathaway trusts him. He trusts that Lewis thought, long and hard, before succumbing. He trusts that Lewis made his decision for better or worse. And now he trusts that Lewis gives his heart genuinely and completely, with all its cracks and corners and clogged arteries.

“It’s not about us,” Hathaway tells him, “She meant a lot to you. It’s fine.”

“I just wish...”

“That she were alive?” He doesn’t do a good job of hiding the tension.

But he catches the surprise on Lewis’s face in the corner of his eye as he glances up at the rear view mirror.

“Part of me,” Lewis says honestly, “But no point wishing that, eh? No, I mean I wish people would just let it go. Let her go. Let me get over it. It’s been ten years.”

“You still think about her. Her friends and family will think about her too.”

Hathaway thinks of Will. He thinks of Jonjo, who calls him on the night of the gay pride march every year, and he thinks of all the fans who still keep the old Midnight Addiction albums and that poster of Esme Ford in the top hat and no bra.

The dead are always remembered by those who live.

“I suppose,” Lewis says.

They spend the night stretched out on the sofa, and Hathaway falls asleep there. Lewis wakes him up at one in the morning and they lie on their own side of the bed, keeping to themselves. But in the morning, they wake up tangled up, as usual, and Hathaway exerts himself to make them both forget the seriousness of the night before.

It works to some extent. If it didn’t, they’d have slit their wrists a long time ago.


End file.
